Here are our own Hawthorne and Longfellow--"content with small means." Here
is Emerson resigning his church in Boston and leaving fame behind him, that
upon the little farm at Concord he might escape the thousand and one
details that robbed his soul of its simplicity. Here is Thoreau building
his log cabin by Walden pond, living on forty dollars a year because he saw
that man was being "destroyed by his unwieldy and overgrown establishment,
cluttered with much furniture and tripped with his own traps, ruined by
luxury and heedless expense, whose only hope was in rigid economy and
Spartan simplicity."
Ours is a world where Cervantes writes Don Quixote living upon three bowls
of porridge brought by the jailer of the prison. The German philosopher
asked one cluster of grapes, one glass of milk and a slice of bread twice
each day. Having completed his philosophy, the old scholar looked back upon
forty happy years, saying that every fine dinner his friends had given him
had blunted his brain for one day, while indigestion consumed an amount of
vital energy that would have sufficed for one page of good writing.
A wise youth will think twice before embarking upon a career involving
large wealth. Some there are possessed of vast property whose duty it is to
carry bravely their heavy burden in the interest of society and the
increase of life's comforts, conveniences and happiness. Yet wise Agur's
prayer still holds: "Give me neither poverty nor riches." Whittier, on his
little farm, refusing a princely sum for a lecture, was content with small
means. Wendell Phillips, preferring the slave and the contempt of Boston's
merchants and her patrician society, chose to "be worthy, not respectable."
Some Ruskin, distributing his bonds and stocks and lands to found
workingmen's clubs, art schools and colleges, that he might have more
leisure for enriching his imagination and heart, chose to "be wealthy, not
rich." Needing many forms of wisdom, our age needs none more than the grace
to "live content with small means, seeking elegance rather than luxury, and
refinement rather than fashion."